In March 2018, John Robinson was awarded the Capital Region Chamber Champion of the Year, in front of 1100 New York business leaders! John proudly accepted one of ten national White House Champions of Change for Disability Employment in 2014 in Washington D.C. Since 2011, he’s served as managing partner, CEO and Founder of Our Ability, which provides inclusive workforce and employment consulting, mentoring, workshops, keynotes and seminars on disability and diversity. Our Ability has a coalition of forty (40) New York State businesses interested in hiring individuals with disabilities. John was the subject of “Get Off Your Knees: The John Robinson Story,” a public television documentary and “Get Off Your Knees: A Story of Faith, Courage, and Determination,” an autobiography published in 2009.
Engage in a highly interactive session with a panel of senior leaders on where our dynamic field is headed. Alternative credentials, shifting demographics, and new models are already shaping how institutions serve students. This group of panelists will provide their unique perspectives on organizational and market forces that are emerging, how they are responding at their institutions, and how UPCEA members will lead us into the near-term future (2025!).
Nelson Baker,
Georgia Institute of TechnologyDr. Nelson Baker, dean of Professional Education at the Georgia Institute of Technology and associate professor in the university’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, leads a multifaceted operation at Georgia Tech Professional Education. The division is comprised of the Global Learning Center, Georgia Tech-Savannah, the Language Institute, and an extensive program of professional education courses in science, technology, engineering, and math, with online professional master’s degrees, as well as an array of distance learning courses, both credit and noncredit.
Baker particularly seeks to create and assess ways in which technology impacts the learning of engineering students. His award-winning work has generated projects such as multi-lingual web-based intelligent simulations for problem solving; intelligent tutors; student models; an online faculty assistant tool for creating course objectives; and a variety of technology-based assessments and virtual reality interfaces for education.In addition to his role as dean, Baker serves as the U.S. principal investigator for a FIPSE Atlantis programme grant (P116J090074), an international activity exploring quality management and benchmarking of continuing engineering education programs; and also as a co-principal investigator on a five-year NASA project, Electronic Professional Development Network (ePDN), which develops and delivers STEM content to high school teachers.
In February 2012, Baker was appointed by Chancellor Huckaby to serve on the University System of Georgia's (USG) Distance Education Task Force to create a framework to better coordinate and guide the future use of distance education for the 35 colleges and universities within the USG system. He currently serves as the President of the International Association for Continuing Engineering Education, and is past-chair of the Georgia Board of Regents Administrative Committee on Public Service and Continuing Education. Baker is a board member for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, and is an active member of ASEE and ASCE.
Bob Hansen,
UPCEA Dr. Robert J. Hansen was named Chief Executive Officer of the University Professional & Continuing Education Association in September 2010. Under Hansen’s leadership, UPCEA has grown by 125% in the past six years. He established a number of initiatives targeting the association’s unique role in online leadership and management under the umbrella of the National Council for Online Leadership: the Summit for Online Leadership and Administration, the Online Leadership Roundtable for chief online learning officers, and the UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership. He also established the UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Professional and Continuing Education, advancing two frameworks to provide a set of standards that reflect the ambitions, potential, and importance of units that serve adult learners.
Hansen previously served as Associate Provost for University Outreach at the University of Southern Maine, a regional public university located in Portland, Maine. Prior to that position, he spent six years at Saint Xavier University of Chicago as Assistant to the President & Secretary of the Corporation, and then as founding Executive Director of Orland Park Campus & Off-Campus Programs. Hansen also previously served as Assistant to the Governor for Education in the administration of former Illinois governor, Jim Edgar. Hansen earned a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois, an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame.
Kathryn Klose, University of Maryland University CollegeDr. Kathryn Klose is the Vice Provost and Dean of the UMUC Graduate School where she guides the development and implementation of the overall strategic plan for the school. She currently oversees the daily operations of the school, including substantive academic and administrative functions. Kathryn has been actively involved in enhancing the graduate learning model and in promoting participatory leadership in the school.
Dr. Klose holds a PhD in Education Policy and Leadership with a Specialization in Curriculum Theory and Development from the University of Maryland College Park. In addition to discipline specific interests, Kathryn’s areas of research in education are relate to the influence of students’ socio-economic status in higher education and designing inclusive curriculum in nontraditional learning spaces.
Frasciello joined Syracuse University in 2000 to provide campus-wide leadership in support of its undergraduate and graduate online and continuing-education initiatives. The school named him interim dean of University College in 2016 before appointing him dean in 2017. Frasciello leads a staff that supports residential and online undergraduate and graduate programs; executive education, language, and culture programming for international students; pre-college programs; and summer programs. He earned a Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric from Syracuse University; a master’s degree from Westminster College; and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland University College. In addition, Frasciello served for 10 years in the U.S. Air Force.
Continuing and adult education departments have historically served the non-traditional student who are now the quiet majority at colleges and universities across the United States. Over the years, through various disruptions, Continuing Education divisions nationwide have been successful in their efforts to maintain strategic agility and address education gaps through innovative and unique teaching programs and modalities. Higher Education is now in the midst of significant economic, technological, and demographic disruption. Continuing Education departments are well positioned to be the catalyst that helps institutions to transform and meet the needs of students and the workplace.
Sarah Bauder joined the State System as the Chief Transformation Officer in January, 2019. Prior to PASSHE, Bauder worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she was responsible for a $1.7 billion scholarship program and led the creation and launch of a $420m program to support low-income under-represented students. Bauder also served on the Postsecondary Success team developing strategies to drive campus-wide innovative change from college access to gainful employment. This expertise was developed during her 23 years of working in higher education at the University of Maryland where she implemented student success programs to help marginalized and underserved students graduate from college.
Bauder’s passion, insights, and ability to unite disparate concepts into transformative innovation have gained the attention of a broad variety of stakeholders. Most notably, she has served on the Executive Board for the National Association of Federal Student Aid Administrators, testified before Congress on three occasions advocating for student aid reform, presented to Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, served as a representative for four-year public institutions on both President Bush and President Obama’s Higher Education task force for redundant and burdensome regulations, and was elected three times to serve on the Negotiated Rulemaking team.
Sarah has traveled globally to China, Australia, and Dubai collaborating with officials on the development of programs designed to uplift marginalized and underrepresented citizens for economic development and growth. She also volunteers as an advisor for business philanthropists most recently in Doha and Saudi Arabia, in the creation of unique and impactful scholarship programs for those regions.
Bauder holds a Master of Arts with honors from University of Maryland, College Park in Policy, Planning and Leadership and a bachelor’s degree with honors from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in Language and Literature. Sarah has been actively engaged in the community by serving on the Executive Board of Generation Hope, the Advisory Board for the Smith School of Business, and the Advisory Board for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
October 4th | 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Change sneaks up on you. Ten years ago, just over two-thirds of adults in the U.S. had a cell phone and just five short years ago, half had smartphones, which ultimately built the infrastructure for our mobile economy. With more communications satellites being launched and the planned roll-out of 5G this year, more technology and automation will sneak into our society and ultimately form the smart city. With disruption comes opportunity or obsolescence. The UPCEA Center for Research and Strategy will share its compilation of secondary research, job analytics and labor forecasts from EMSI, and interviews with leaders and futurist and how it could impact the future of professional, continuing and online education.
Jim Fong, Chief Research OfficerJim Fong is the founding director of UPCEA’s Center for Research and Strategy. In his role, Jim has analyzed demographic, occupational, technological and societal trends and data to help the higher education community better serve the adult and corporate learner. As the Center’s director, he works closely with dozens of colleges and universities annually in new program development initiatives, enrollment management and marketing process analyses and the review of online and continuing education portfolios.
Prior to joining UPCEA, Jim worked as a higher education strategic marketing and CRM consultant and researcher for two firms and prior to that was the Director of Marketing, Research and Planning for Penn State Outreach. At Penn State Outreach, he was responsible for strategic marketing, marketing management, research, creative and database teams. Jim played a major role in the early launch of Penn State’s World Campus by assessing new program needs and the development of marketing strategies and systems.
Jim holds an M.B.A., an M.S. in Applied Statistics and a B.S. in Mathematics, all from The University of Vermont. In 2004, UPCEA awarded him the Adelle Robertson Award as its Continuing Professional Educator for the year. That year, he also received the Mid-Atlantic Region’s Distinguished Service Award.
October 4th | 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Sarah Bauder, Chief Transformation Officer